This invention relates generally to pipe couplers, and more specifically, to an adjustable coupler with improved gasket and clips where the coupler joins pipes regardless of their end surface condition.
Clamps and couplers used to connect sections of pipe, end-to-end, have appeared in the pipe connecting art over the years. Such clamps often are is employed to connect sections of pipe or hopper tees on tank trailers and cars. In certain applications, particularly in dry bulk hauling, the integrity of the seal at the pipe connections is critical in preventing cross contamination of the products sequentially hauled in the tanker trailers. Often pellets, powders, and oil sands travel from a factory or a mine to a manufacturing plant in tank trailers. The pellets, powders, or sands unload through gravity gates, valves, or hoppers located on the bottom of the tank trailers. Hopper tees attached to the bottom of the hopper are connected to collection pipes. Pressurized air, or alternatively sometimes a vacuum, is employed through the pipes to accelerate the emptying of the dry bulk products.
The pressurized air enters a hopper from above and below through aerators then exits into the collection pipes. Pressurized air also enters the collection pipes from the upstream end, often proximate the tongue of a tank trailer. The pressurized air moves product along from a hopper through a tee and into the collection pipes for delivery. Dry bulk material, such as oil sands, though often moves in an irregular manner and may fluctuate in volume passed through collection pipe in a given time. The fluctuations in material flow and the air pressure in the collection pipe tend to separate adjacent pipe sections slightly, most of the time, and greatly, on rare occasions, leading to a disconnection or a rupture of the collection pipe.
Accounting for the slight separation in adjacent ends of pipes, fittings, such as couplers, include a gasket. The gasket fits snugly within an end of a fitting and around an end of a pipe. The gasket is generally a hollow cylinder with a thin wall that fits within an end of a fitting or an arm of a coupler. Gaskets can be formed as a single cylindrical piece or as a strip then bent into cylindrical form. During installation, a gasket inserts within a fitting's end or abuts a coupler arm subject to pinching when a pair of hinged arms closes. In allowing slight axial movement of pipe ends within a coupler, the gasket flexes along its wall, generally upon the inside surface of the gasket.
Generally, dry bulk product must empty completely between loads to is prevent contamination of later loads, a situation that trucking companies, mines, and manufacturing plants avoid at the highest of costs and efforts. For example, if the hauler carries black plastic resin beads, all of the black plastic resin must be removed from the tank trailer, as well as the hopper and piping often coupled together, to prevent contamination of a later load of white or other colored plastic resin. A hauler may also carry oil sands with a later load of flour further emphasizing the need to avoid contamination. Contamination, of even a small amount, can destroy a many ton load and force its disposal at high costs to the mine, the manufacturing plant, or the trucking firm.